01/08/2003

German Grand Prix - First Qualifying Report

Panasonic Toyota Racing had an encouraging opening day's qualifying at Hockenheim for Sunday's 12th round of the FIA F1 World Championship. Olivier Panis again placed his TF103 in the top 10 as the team aims to score points for the fourth time in five races.

Hockenheim is now a very different circuit from the flat-out blast through the forest leading into a highly-populated Stadium section. The Stadium still remains packed with blaring horns as the locals noisily get behind the Schumacher brothers. But the rest of the circuit demands more from the chassis than the low-downforce old circuit that rewarded pure engine power.

For the second race of the year on 'home' soil the Cologne-based team headed for Hockenheim with a revised engine specification and the latest aerodynamic developments for the TF103 chassis.

Panis encouraged by the first-day performance and a qualifying time (1m15.471s) within a second of Ralf Schumacher's session-topping best said: "The car feels well balanced and our tyre supplier is looking extremely competitive so all things considered it is a good start to the weekend. As always though we have to work on a good race set-up that will allow us to maintain consistent performance in the race."

If Panis was fully satisfied team mate Cristiano da Matta was not the Brazilian having to content himself with 15th position after a lap in 1m16.450s.

"I went more than 0.3s faster than that in the morning free practice session Da Matta explained, so obviously the potential is there in the car and I didn't get the most out of it in qualifying. The balance was not right and I made some mistakes. But it is better that than having the team struggle. We can do some more work tomorrow morning and hopefully get it right for the more important Saturday qualifying session."

Team manager Ange Pasquali added: "Olivier put a beautiful lap together and although it didn't work out for Cristiano we are confident about our race preparation."

The BMW Williams F1 Team set the pace with Ralf Schumacher fastest on 1m14.427s ahead of Colombian team mate Juan Pablo Montoya (1m14.673s). Jarno Trulli put the first of the Mild Seven Renault F1 entries into third place (1m15.004s) and Mark Webber did another strong job with the Jaguar (1m15.030s) to split the Renaults. Fernando Alonso was fifth fastest (1m15.214s) ahead of championship challenger Kimi Raikkonen (1m15.276). The Finn just overcame the challenge of Briton Justin Wilson (1m15.373s) who is having his first race for Jaguar after replacing Antonio Pizzonia in the team.

The first seven positions were claimed by cars on Michelin tyres.

Panis also took the opportunity to display his skills on the football pitch on Wednesday evening as he helped Michael Schumacher's team to a 9-7 victory over an All-Star eleven. And yes Olivier did get his name on the score sheet!